Curt Smith: Mitt Romney: A puzzlement’

Curt Smith

Saturday

Nov 26, 2011 at 12:01 AM

“I had observed him by this time for several months,” Theodore H. White wrote of Richard Nixon in “The Making of the President” 1960, “and he had persisted as a puzzle to my mind and understanding.” Mitt Romney remains my puzzle. Gentle reader, help unlock, as Churchill called Russia, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

“I had observed him by this time for several months,” Theodore H. White wrote of Richard Nixon in “The Making of the President” 1960, “and he had persisted as a puzzle to my mind and understanding.” Mitt Romney remains my puzzle. Gentle reader, help unlock, as Churchill called Russia, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”

One moment, I mourn that the Republican Party front-runner has changed positions, but not personality. Another, he seems exactly what the doctor ordered as president — a “Dr. Fix the Economy” before America’s economy implodes.

One day I think him tall, dark and handsome; go directly to Mt. Rushmore. Next, I doubt the middle class will elect a man who said, “When the economy’s bad, buy stocks.” Yin: Romney has often been as rousing as Lawrence Welk. Yang: Unlike Barack Obama, Welk was competent. I feel like “The Three Faces of Eve” trying to grasp the Twelve Days of Mitt.

According to every national poll, Romney is the Republican candidate likeliest to ensure Obama’s involuntary retirement. “I’d rather be a really good one-term president,” Obama has said, “than a mediocre two-term president.” Romney’s luck is that this president has been a really awful one-term bust.

To win, Obama must change the subject to the GOP. Attack. Smear. Divide. His problem may be demonizing someone who seems benign, is a model family man and has never had a bad hair day. Romney’s career — businessman, Olympics savior, governor — ties success, skill and, above all, moderation. Mitt may be many things — but an extreme conservative he is not.

This may hurt in January-February caucuses and primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina. It is unlikely to if he is nominated. Romney seems in sync with the majority view of tax and spend, limited government and American exceptionalism. Above all, he has improved exponentially as a speaker and debater since the 2008 campaign: vital against Obama, who is nothing if not slick.

It is true that Romney lacks connecting tissue to a toxic culture. Those offended are mostly liberal, secular, and/or shallow — not voting Republican if Lincoln were the nominee. By contrast, an unemployed worker is unlikely to care if a job-savvy president is hip or square. (I prefer the latter.) Given 9.1 percent unemployment, bread and butter may be Romney’s bridge to the bourgeoisie.

None of this ensures the Mittbuster’s success. GOPers less loathe than aren’t sold on Romney — a worry, since our last two presidents have proved caveat emptor. Is pragmatism a means, or end? At one time or another Romney has backed gay marriage, abortion and government health care. By contrast, in 2007 he scorned bigots pining to drive religion from the public square. Did he mean it? Elected, would he betray Middle America, like W. and Obama? We simply don’t know.

Part of me is resigned to Romney’s nomination. Part hails his perceived electability. Another part hears warning bells: a corporate Wall Street Republican, the kind whose DNA snatches political defeat from the jaws of victory. Thomas Dewey. Nelson Rockefeller. Bush 41 and 43. John McCain. We have seen this film before.

In “The King and I,” Yul Brynner croaked, “’Tis a Puzzlement.” Every would-be President is a Rorschach test seen through a voter’s prism. Less blank slate that blurred glass, Romney needs to show the man behind the poised, glib front. Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There’s no there, there.” Romney has a there, there — indeed, several. To win, he must reveal which would take the Oath of Office fourteen months from now.

Curt Smith is the author of 14 books and former speechwriter to President George H.W. Bush. Mr. Smith writes twice monthly for Gatehouse Media’s Messenger-Post Newspapers. Email curtsmith@netacc.net.

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